


Love You When the Day is Done

by Pamplemousse



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Domestic Bliss, Fluff, M/M, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-01 20:50:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17251175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pamplemousse/pseuds/Pamplemousse
Summary: Chirrut, in a rare admission of fallibility, had cancelled his classes and stayed home, laid up with what Baze suspected was the flu and Chirrut maintained was just a stubborn head cold.A Modern AU, starring Chirrut Imwe as College Professor and Baze Malbus as Bookshop Manager. Disgustingly Married, as per usual.





	Love You When the Day is Done

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and Happy New Year to the small but steadfast band of adventurers still reading in this fandom! I love each and every one of you and give you all a tiny kiss on the forehead and wishes for a prosperous year filled with love, support, naps, and good food. I offer up this small token of Modern AU Nonsense to greet the new year. Please enjoy, and keep burning bright.

The grey sky pressed down in a thick layer of slate clouds as the tram car rattled its way through the city center. Baze stared idly out the window, his breath fogging the glass as the brick buildings and bundled pedestrians swept past. The tram was full at this time of day, crowded with people heading to lunch and students making their way to their classes. A cold drizzle trickled down the glass, and Baze shoved his hands deeper into his pockets, grateful to be inside the reasonably warm tram car instead of slogging through the slush-covered sidewalks. 

On a normal day, Baze would be taking the tram in the opposite direction, catching the line that ran south from the city center and let off a few blocks from Chirrut’s university office, where they usually had lunch together. Occasionally, when the weather wasn’t quite so miserable, they would meet up somewhere in the city and sit out on the patio of this or that cafe, picking off each other’s plates and soaking up a little bit of NiJedha’s weak sunshine. Baze would bring his leftovers back to the small, well-loved bookstore where he worked and leave them as an offering on the staff room table, knowing they would quickly be snapped up by the wolfish students who worked there between classes. 

(And if he always seemed to order extra portions that he was never able to finish, well, Chirrut had always been good at keeping his secrets.)

But today, Chirrut, in a rare admission of fallibility, had cancelled his classes and stayed home, laid up with what Baze suspected was the flu and Chirrut maintained was just a stubborn head cold. 

A head cold that had left him aching and dizzy and shivering with an alarmingly high fever, sure. But just a head cold, nonetheless.

So instead of heading to Chirrut’s office, Baze stepped out the jangling front door of the bookshop, tugged his hat down over his ears, and caught the tram back toward home. 

——— 

Baze had been twenty-two, a first-year student delayed in his education by a lack of money and too much circumstance, working in the campus bookstore to help with tuition, when he met Chirrut. 

Chirrut was in his third year, a little younger, a little softer around the jaw than Baze was, bright and slender, equipped with a hundred-watt smile and a long white cane. 

On the day they met, Chirrut had made his way over to Baze’s station at the checkout counter, sweeping his cane in a tight, practiced movement, a stuffed backpack slung over his shoulder. He set his student ID card on the counter and smiled. 

“There should be something back there for me,” he said, sliding the card forward. “Îmwe, Chirrut.” 

“Right.” 

Baze found his name on the long shelves of reserved books, scrawled out on a piece of paper and rubber banded around a pile of thick, plastic-bound Braille textbooks. He hefted them back to the counter and began ringing them up. 

Chirrut, leaning his elbows against the checkout counter, asked, “You’re new, right?”

Baze looked up from the jumble of still-unfamiliar buttons on the register. “Sorry?”

“I don’t think I’ve met you here before.” Chirrut smiled disarmingly. “I try to get to know whoever’s working the counters around campus. Makes it easier to bribe you for favors later on.”

“Oh. Uh, yes. Just started this semester.”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you…?”

“Oh, um. Baze.”

“Baze.” Chirrut grinned around the name. “Nice to meet you, Baze.”

Chirrut chatted with him anytime he came by the bookstore, and it wasn’t long before a quick hello turned into questions about his major, his interests, his hometown, what classes he was taking this semester, what he was reading, his favorite kind of candy bars (for aforementioned bribing purposes). Baze, never the most talkative sort and far from the kind of person to strike up conversations with strangers, found himself answering without hardly meaning to, drawn in by Chirrut’s sincere interest and warm, familiar attentions. Conversations at the bookstore counter turned into conversations over lunch, turned into conversations between classes, turned into taking a class together the next semester after Chirrut talked his ear off about a professor in the Religious Studies department he’d been dying to take a class with since he’d started his degree.

(Which would turn, eventually, into a Religious Studies minor on top of his degree, because Baze ended up actually finding this stuff pretty interesting.)

By the end of his first year, Baze had taken up a semi-permanent residence in the living room of Chirrut’s tiny one-bedroom apartment, coming by most afternoons to work on some assignment or another and staying late enough to cook them something serviceable for dinner in Chirrut’s spartan kitchen. Chirrut laid on heavy praises for Baze’s cooking, and Baze, blushing harder than he’d like to admit, pushed a dirty pan into his hands and tossed a towel at his laughing face. Occasionally he’d stay so late, talking about nothing or toiling away at homework in a companionable silence, that Chirrut would tell him to stay the night. He spent more than a few nights comfortably ensconced on Chirrut’s beat up old couch, marveling at this newly-found feeling of safety, of home.

Chirrut kissed him the first time, just on the cheek, just half a moment accompanied by a warm hand resting on his shoulder, right before he went home for summer break. Baze was staying in town to work over break, and he barely managed to stammer some sort of intelligible goodbye before Chirrut flitted away, waving over his shoulder with a cheeky grin on his face. 

It took Baze the whole next day to work up the nerve to call him, pacing around his bedroom and half-dialing his number a thousand time before he finally punched in the last digit. 

Chirrut answered the phone with a laughing, “Finally!” after barely a full ring, and it was enough to set Baze off laughing as well, the nervous energy that had been building up in his stomach over the last twenty-four hours flowing out of him in a rush. They talked about nothing for the better part of two hours before Chirrut finally told him to go to bed. 

“I’ll catch the bus back up to NiJedha in a couple weeks,” he said, and Baze’s stomach flipped at the idea of seeing him. “We can go to that junk shop you keep telling me about. You can show me around.”

“Yeah,” Baze said, laying on his back on his bedroom floor, staring up at the ceiling. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

——— 

The house was dim and silent when Baze opened the front door. He eased it closed again quickly, keeping the warmth inside, and began to shed layers: gloves in pocket, coat on hook, followed by scarf, followed by knit cap. He set his keys in the bowl by the door and tugged off his shoes before making his way toward the bedroom. 

The door was open a crack, and Baze peered inside, nudging it wider with his foot and wincing at the squeak. Soft grey light filtered in through their thin curtains, drawing out deep shadows and adding to the hush. Curled up on his side and buried under a mountain of blankets, Chirrut was sound asleep. 

Baze frowned a bit as he stepped into the bedroom. It wasn’t like Chirrut to sleep in the middle of the day, even when he was sick. He’d been awake when Baze had left for work, sitting up in bed, looking groggy and sour after a long night spent coughing and tossing back the sheets, only to grab at them again a few minutes later when his fever sweat swung over to chills. 

Baze had piled up the bedside table with water, tissues, painkillers, and a bottle of gingerale in case his stomach acted up. The glass of water was half empty, and a small pile of used tissues littered the floor next to the waste basket. Baze scooped them up and moved the basket a bit closer, then sat carefully on the edge of the bed, reaching out to run a hand down Chirrut’s shoulder. 

“Hey,” he whispered. “Hey, sweetheart, wake up.”

It took a moment, but Chirrut eventually shifted, mumbling a low, discontented grumble into the pillow his face was mashed into. His brow pinched, and he frowned. 

“Oh god,” he croaked, laboriously turning over onto his back. “Did I sleep all day? What time is it?”

“No,” Baze said, smiling a bit and smoothing a hand over Chirrut’s mussed hair. “It’s only noon. I just wanted to come home and check on you.”

“Oh.” Chirrut sighed out expansively, leaning into the touch a little. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know. But eating lunch in your office isn’t as much fun when you’re not there. Here, sit up a minute.”

Struggling up on his elbows, Chirrut scooched up far enough that Baze could get a better look at him. He rested a hand on Chirrut’s forehead, and Chirrut sighed again, slumping back into the messy pile of pillows. 

“Fever’s gone down a bit,” Baze murmured, shifting his hand to cup Chirrut’s cheek—a little flushed, still, but he’d just woken up. “How do you feel?”

Chirrut blew a half-hearted raspberry in his direction. Baze gave a sympathetic chuckle.

“Did you eat anything this morning?”

Chirrut hummed a non-committal tone, and Baze tsked, shaking his head in a well-worn exasperation. 

“How about some tea and toast?” he asked, leaning forward to drop a kiss on Chirrut’s forehead then reaching over to grab the glass of water. 

Another listless hum met this suggestion. Chirrut ran a hand down his shoulder, trailing down to squeeze his hand as Baze stood up. “With some cinnamon?”

Baze smiled, lifting his hand to give it a quick, bristly kiss. “With as much cinnamon as you want, if it’ll get you to actually _eat_ something.”

Chirrut waved a hand at him as he slid back down under the blankets. “We’ll see.”

In the kitchen, Baze put a couple slices of bread into the toaster and filled the kettle. He fished a bag of Chirrut’s god-awful tea out of the pantry then made himself a sandwich, grabbing an apple out of the bowl and adding it to his plate. The toast popped, and he slathered it with a healthy layer of butter before sprinkling it with a dusting of cinnamon. He refilled the water glass, poured the near-boiling water over the teabag, then balanced everything precariously in his arms and carried his load back to the bedroom. 

Tea and water set on the bedside table and plates of food deposited into Chirrut’s lap, Baze climbed into bed, sitting up against the headboard and taking his plate from Chirrut’s waiting hands. Chirrut bypassed the plate of toast in favor of slurping on his tea until Baze nudged it with a pointed cough. 

“Fine, fine,” he sighed, taking an over-large bite of the toast, heedless of the crumbs dropping down his shirt. “How was Jyn this morning?” he asked around his mouthful.

“Better.” Baze took a crunching bite of his apple. “If ‘better’ means only rolling her eyes at the books she disagrees with, instead of actively berating people for buying them.”

Chirrut laughed. “She’ll get there.”

“If she doesn’t run everyone off first,” Baze groused. 

Baze made quick work of his sandwich while Chirrut nibbled on his toast, eventually setting the last half-eaten slice aside and resting his head on Baze’s shoulder. 

“You should just stay home for the rest of the afternoon,” he sighed, turning to direct another harsh cough into his elbow. “It’s boring here, all alone.”

“I think Josie might have something to say about that.”

“You know she’d let you. She likes me.” 

“That might be true, but I don’t think even you could charm her into letting me disappear for the rest of the day. This last week has been a madhouse.” Baze checked his phone then levered up off the bed, gathering up their dishes. “I do need to go though. The trams are a little slower getting back this time of day.”

Chirrut groaned and flopped back onto the pillows, flipping the blankets up over his face. “Fine,” he said, muffled. “Leave me to waste away in your absence.”

Baze leaned over him and flipped the blanket back. “I’ll be home by six. Try not to expire before then.” He dropped a quick kiss on Chirrut’s cheek, then one more on his scowling lips for good measure, then flipped the blanket back over his face. 

“Love you,” Chirrut called from under the blanket as Baze stepped out of the bedroom, pulling the door nearly-shut behind him.

“Love you too. Finish your toast.”

Shoes tugged on, then gloves, scarf, hat, coat, keys from the bowl. Baze trundled back out into the cold, warmed throughout and smiling into the crisp winter air. 

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the song [I Do by Susie Suh](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFWjsyjlKnE), which is a sweet little love song.


End file.
